A prophecy come to pass?

Allen Drury was a reporter in the New York Times' Washington bureau who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1960 for "Advise and Consent," still the greatest novel about the doings and undoings in Powertown USA. He was a passionate anti-Communist and highly critical of liberal group think long before Ronald Reagan made his presence known here. That in itself is a commentary on how far the New York Times has fallen over the years, although Drury left The Times after the success of "Advise and Consent."

In the last few days, I've been reading one of Drury's subsequent novels, "Anna Hastings," the story of the rise to power of a Washington newspaperwoman. Like its famous predecessor, the book is rich with the kind of detail about Washington that still rings true more than 30 years after he wrote it.  Warning to Senator Obama: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

But given the increasing evidence of how the major media has largely sold its historic birthright to ensure Obama's election, it was startling to read this passage from Drury circa 1977:

"It is a different language: words do not mean the same. Partisanship, vindictiveness, personal antipathies, deliberate slanting, deliberate suppression of opposing viewpoints - censorship, in fact, though the word is vastly abhorred by those who practice it - all these now masquerade with a bland self-righteousness as honesty, lack of bias, fairness, compassion and objectivity.

"When challenged hard enough, those who argue this will eventually admit that perhaps these terms no longer apply; but, then they ask, why should they? What is the advantage of really being honest, unbiased, fair, compassionate and objective? Are not the times so evil that we of the media must be partisan, vindictive, personal, deliberately biased, deliberately censorious and suppressive of the other fellow's point of view? How else are we to defeat the monsters of our age?

"It is an argument ... that forms a perfect circle - a circle that is rolling the media inevitably toward destruction of the First Amendment and with it all those who so loudly claim its easy protections as they busily violate its honorable intentions. We think a monstrous reaction could come, from a people made so cynical and so hopeless by the media that not even the media itself will be able to withstand the withering wind, consuming all institutions of stability great or small, good or bad, that its members have unleashed."

A bit apocalyptic perhaps, but Drury was like that in his later works. Then I click on Drudge and see the latest plummeting newspaper circulation figures and read about the latest layoffs in the newspaper industry. Newspaper readers, it seems, have no loyalty anymore. The traditional TV network news programs are losing viewers too, as Americans opt for their favorite cable news networks and divide into warring camps. It seems we don't even share a love of country anymore and certainly not a common language. How far we've fallen since my father's generation.

Of course, the bias and cynicism of the news media aren't all to blame, but they deserve much of the "credit." What is truth, after all, if even news reporters don't report what they really see. Now, as Drury warned three decades ago, the bill's come due. Some say we have more media than ever, but I see chaos.